But in the era of right is left and trash is gold, the struggle to turn a bloody legacy to lily white has already begun

It shouldn’t be too hard to say that David Dinkins was forever tarred by the 1991 Crown Heights riots and the blood of Yankel Rosenbaum, which still refuses to stop boiling. Anyone who lived through the Dinkins mayoralty from 1989 to 1993 is likely to forget everything else and just recall the three days that Jews lived in fear of a massacre, 45 years after the Holocaust.

Nobody denies it. Even Dinkins, who died last week.

“The New York Times probably has an obit there for me now,” he told the Times in an interview five years ago. “I always used to say, they’ll say, ‘David Dinkins, first black mayor of the City of New York,’ and the next sentence will be about Crown Heights.”

As it should be. Norman Rosenbaum, Yankel’s brother, alleged that Dinkins responded, “We allowed them to vent their anger” when confronted by then-governor Mario Cuomo two days into the violence. He insisted to me that investigators confirmed this quote, though the formal commission that investigated the riots did not find evidence Dinkins said it.

Regardless, said Rosenbaum, who was niftar this past summer, police refused to intervene until Cuomo threatened to send in the National Guard. Within hours, the riots ended.

But in the era of right is left and trash is gold, the struggle to turn a bloody legacy to lily white has already begun. Al Sharpton — ah, Al Sharpton! The man of who led a mob of hundreds through Crown Heights demanding Jewish blood — led another rally this weekend, attended by Mayor Bill de Blasio and other Dinkins disciples. He called Dinkins “a fist fight for what was right.” De Blasio called the riots “one very sad moment” of a term that included “so many more important things to think about with David Dinkins.”

When people die, the first reaction should be to focus on his positive qualities. And with Dinkins, there were many. He broke the racial barrier, becoming — with the enthusiastic backing of many in the Orthodox community, including the Satmar and Lubavitcher kehillos — New York City’s first, and so far only, black mayor. He was genial to a fault and genuinely respected people.

But those are qualities for a gentleman, not a statesman. And Dinkins’s legacy is stained by the blood of Yankel Rosenbaum Hy”d.

So let me throw down a stake amid this media lionization of Dinkins. As sure as Lincoln saved the Union and Hoover presided over the Great Depression, Dinkins allowed the Crown Heights riots to happen.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 838)